Shortening the fast cycle route Arnhem-Nijmegen | Bicycle Dutch

BICYCLE DUTCH) Shortening the fast cycle route Arnhem-Nijmegen When the “RijnWaalpad” (the fast cycle route between Nijmegen and Arnhem) was opened in 2015, it wasn’t entirely finished. Some things that needed to be done at the time have since been taken care of. The finishing touches shortened the route by half a kilometre. Time to… [Read More]

Shortening the fast cycle route Arnhem-Nijmegen

When the “RijnWaalpad” (the fast cycle route between Nijmegen and Arnhem) was opened in 2015, it wasn’t entirely finished. Some things that needed to be done at the time have since been taken care of. The finishing touches shortened the route by half a kilometre. Time to pay the fast cycle route between the Rhine and the Waal rivers another visit.

The RijnWaalpad offers a viable alternative to people who do not (always) want to drive the distance from Arnhem or Nijmegen to their work or other activities they may want to go to, somewhere between those two cities. The RijnWaalpad decreased the cycle distance between the two cities from 17.7 km to 15.8 km for a total cost of 17 million euros. Some of that distance was taken off the route after it was officially opened. I have two examples of how that was done in this post. Some people had concerns about this shorter route though. The new route follows the A325 motorway closely and people worried that this route might have more polluted air, that you would breathe in, because it is so close to such a big road. The province of Gelderland had this investigated. Focusing on ultra-fine particles, black carbon and nitrogen dioxide, the conclusion was that this is not the case. In fact, the air quality on the new route is even slightly better than it was on the old route via Elst.

The red line represents the initial route left around the cinema of Nijmegen when it was under construction. That red line is 250 metres longer than the green line which represents the current and definitive route passing right and in front of the cinema.